This may be the murkiest of all possible moral debates.

Second Life is becoming a haven for sexual deviants and misfits, with a number of authorities around the world investigating sex crimes committed in the popular online virtual world. If the perpetrators are found, they may find themselves doing real time.

In addition to playing host to legitimate gamers, Second Life has quickly become home to various sexual deviants and sickos. Cyber sex is reportedly one of the most popular activities in Second Life, with the virtual world playing host to numerous sex clubs and bordellos.

There’s even a shopping center where you can browse for available escorts.

To give you an idea of the mind set of some Second Life players (I won’t call them citizens), a popular pastime for deviants is to set up naked male avatars, which they rub up against female avatars. The mind boggles.

But some sickos go even further, with reports of child sex, rape, and stalking.
Last month prosecutors in Germany started investigating Second Life players involved in virtual child sex.

So can you rape a virtual person? Is it child molesting if the child like avatar is being controlled by an adult operator? Can you steal items that only exist in virtual reality?

Twenty years ago all of this would have seemed impossible to comprehend, but it is now a very real ethical debate and moral conundrum.

If the reason that having sex with a child is immoral and illegal is because of the psychological damage done to the child, then when both participants are adults the argument no longer holds up. After all we have all seen photos of adult women dressed like school girls or cheerleaders which is clearly designed to stimulate the fantasy of being sexually aroused by an underage female. Some would call that sick, but others would say it is harmless fantasy.

As usual I am torn between both sides of this debate. On the one hand nothing upsets me as much as the idea of an adult having sexual relations with a child. I work with children and feel very protective of them.

However on the other hand I cannot help but think that if somebody were predisposed to wanting to have sex with children, and this online role playing allowed them to act out their fantasies without hurting any actual children, would that be so bad? I mean prostitutes are often called upon to act childlike to turn their clients on, so if you had two people who were in agreement acting out a fantasy in the virtual world would that inherently be wrong?

You know even as I type out this argument I feel very uncomfortable and a little on the dark side. But I assume that is because of my own deeply held prejudices against child molesters. But technically that is not who we are talking about. They are not really doing anything in actual reality, and in virtual reality they are only pretending to do something wrong.

Sometimes video games get dinged with the idea that they make people violent. I have always believed the opposite. That for most people getting to act out their deepest, darkest impulses in a gaming environment makes them less likely to seek that thrill in the real world. However I am also aware that for some the opposite occurs and that it simply makes them more comfortable with the idea of acting their fantasies out in the real world. So I would assume that would be the case with potential child molesters. For most of these troubled individuals, acting out their fantasies online may keep them from ever giving into their impulses in the "real world". But others may take a barely felt impulse and, through acting them out in cyberspace, feed it until it becomes an all consuming desire that they very well may act out on an innocent child. My instinct makes me think that this person is in the minority, of the minority of people who have these impulses.

So I guess to sum up my thinking on this, I would have to say that it should not be illegal for somebody to act out a child molesting fantasy online, but I would be very concerned about having that same person around my children. I am aware that many so called "normal" people have deep dark desires that they do not let others know about, and that if we were to discover them it would completely change how much we would trust them or like them. So it is probably best that they keep those urges or fantasies suppressed. But I also assume that most of these dark impulses are fairly innocuous and not desires to hurt or injure their fellow humans.

But if they do feel a desire to rape or hurt another human being I guess I would feel more comfortable allowing them an outlet for these impulses rather then to have them suppress them until they eventually boil over and make that person cause actual harm to child or woman.

If any of you have thoughts on this I would be interested in hearing them. Feel free to comment.